(clection) season
on the poverty
of chicanx artists this is the definition
of class hatred
powerlines and the
suspension of time and more!

ISSUE 1- FALL 2020

the irredeemable
university
>» seven reasons to hate

an anarchist journal from north texas
Ora eee
turned riot in downtown Dallas on July 18, 1
following the police murder of 12 y

Rodriguez. The event hospit

officers. This pushed DPD to

officer with murder and reform its hirin

to reflect the city’s demographics. No

Pee ee eer eee ei)
that the police exist to maintain white supremacy.

 

Revolutionaries are often the most surprised at the outbreak of revolution, We
ae not yer living in revolutionary times, but the current outbreak of Black-led
rebellion and insurrection is only the natural outcome of centuries’ domination. It
has been part ofthe fabric of this society since the first slave rebellion in 1526 on
the coast of what is known as Georgia. Iris within this history in which we situate
the upheavals and from which we wish to support and eventually

 

1 the end of

‘When starting this project, couple months ago we fet frustrated with the polit
ste ical landscape. Consisting of mostly liberal activists or self-righteous party mem
bers, especially in DFW, it was bleak for us to say the least. To be quite honest it

5D sil beak, but the pend of COVID-19 and its mismanagement ae mating
the mask of the American dream slip away to reveal che decaying face of white

Up “meme tases found upon hs making ew opening fr destin

We are not progresives, there sno nation to we are trying to improve. We are not
© ets, we donor sek to manage capil bu wo destoy it We are Black, own,
proletarian, and anarchist
GH With sebetton comes posibies, anger, hatred, life but also repression, hop,
LJ <peetion death, We mst be, we wil be, prepaed fr both,

  
 

 

on the poverty of chicanx artists
the irredeemable university

this is the definition of class hatred
the most american president
seven reasons to hate the season
anti-polites and the police

powerlines & the suspension of time:
reflections on temporal perceptions

to my people

on the black leadership and other
white myths

sanitary crisis or crisis of civilization?

reading suggestions

Note: Underlined titles are works that
originally appeared in H8TERS

ea ey eed
ere eet
Peas

Sena
thinking that arises from,
butis not tied to, our
een ee Sa
cen

We believe that the
best introduction is to
Pees nes aos
Pec)
eer
Pecos
Peer ots

Sead
ete ess

ee eters

Sr eae!
een eed
Pees ts
Pe eed
em eens
whether it's a group chat,
Deer tact et ca
night talk around the
cree

CE

a aeons
Ener nts
ne oean
es ad
Peers
help us feel slightly less
isolated

ee
groups bloom!

 
RIAH MILTON - DRAYA MCCARTY
TONY MCDADE - MERCI MACK
BRAYLA STONE - SHAKI PETERS

     
  
 
 
     

‘We want to take a moment to
mourn the loss of our Black
queer and trans siblings,
whether it is from anti

 

violence, medical negligence,
or this antagonistic world. We
carry you in our hearts, we
mourn, we heal, and we fight
for you. We will destroy this
world that destroyed you.

   

 

MONIKA DIAMOND - BREE BLACK
TATIANA HALL - REM’MIE FELLS
OLUWATOYIN SALAU - NINA POP

..AND ALL THOSE WHOSE NAMES WE
UNFORTUNATELY DO NOT KNOW
ON THE POVERTY OF
CHICANX ARTISTS

EIChavo

“This essay comes from the aftermath of
the LA'92 riots, We republish it here for
the many self-described revolutionary
artists we have met on our journeys in
north Texas and beyond.

If the artist is not the most hated
member of the Chicanx commu-
nity itis certain that a very healthy
disgust towards the artist is felt by
many in the barrio, In the artists at-
‘tempt to express themselves, speak
for La Raza, or to raise their con-
sciousness, they come short of the
mark, The inherent poverty of the
art scene is its inability to under-
stand and change society, its refs-
al to see itself as a market place for

 

 

mocosos and their relatives, every-
‘one hates the false notion of the art-

istas a representative of our needs or
as a spokesperson for change.

All the novelty rappers, uninspired
singers, hack writers, crayola paint-
crs, pretentious poets, and the hard
ly-funny cartoonists and comedians
that make up the Chicano And
Chicana Artist (CACA) cultural
scene imagine themselves to be that
which they are not: for some reason
they believe that they are a challenge
‘or an opposition to the dominant
culture, The truth is that they are
merely another aspect of the same
society or as some would accurately
call it, they are part of the specta~
cle of negation. When a person's life
lacks in meaning, pleasure, and they

 

have no control over how to run
their own lives, they look outside of
themselves for salvation. The artist
finds his calling in “self-expression”,
creating art pieces in which she can
live out a dull reflection of what has
not been possible in real life. That's
not beautiful it’s pathetic.

In aworld that runs on a heavy dose
of alienation the reverence for art
serves only to strengthen that so-
ciety. The emergence of the Chica~
no Art scene is a movement of the
forgotten commodity back into the
flow of the marketplace; the desire
to belong within the world of sep-
aration; to be bought and sold
‘everyone else. The artist has no vi-
sion, She fails to see what is truly
beautiful, just as they failed to see
the poetry in the streets during the
rioting in ‘92. Can their little doo-
les ever top the critique of daily life
that the looters offered in their fes-
tive events? OF course not.

 

 

So what happens to La Raza once
the artist sells his piece, gets her
grant, or has that special gallery
showing? Nothing. All the people
that you aim to represent on your
canvas or in your poems, we still
have to exist in the same ghettoes,
wwe still have to work in the same
stupid jobs, or wait in the same
‘welfare lines. We will never see you
there, You will never mean anything
tous.

We laugh at you and the society
you reinforce.

Give it up.

‘You're headed nowhere.

‘SUSLBH SUBLBH SUSLBH SYBL6H SULBH SUBL6H SULBH SU3ISH SULBH SUBLGH SURLSH SUBLGH SURLSH SUBLGH SULBH SUBLGH SUBISH SUSLBH SULSH

*
   
    

CPT ee |
Reflections

[A PBS PRESENTATION,

bart

 

 

 

 

Lifted from Anarchy Comics which ran during the‘80s. It seems like the more thin;
change, the more they stay the same. *
EXCERPTS FROM

The Irredeemable
UNIVERSITY

‘A roundtable discussion with current and
former graduate workers of Abolish the UC

We include this text from comrades on
‘the Westcoast to help shatter the no-
tion many radicals implicity assume
about the liberatory potential of the
university. Our own experiences have
showon us that universities are simply
sites of training for the future manag-
ers ofthis worl, a site of recuperation
and defanging

“The University of California is irre
deemable, Broadly, the modern uni-
versity system is a series of institutions
‘that perpetuate setter colonialism and
racial capitalism. Entrenched in a is
tory of imperialism, colonization, and
white supremacy, universities profit
_from dispossession and racialized vio-
lence. And the UC is especially guilty.
Since the late 19th century, the profits
_from the seizure and selling of Indig-
‘enous lands have laid the foundation
for its now 21.1 billion dollar endow-
‘ment. With this understanding, we
‘argue that the UC cannot be saved nor
should it be reformed. Abolition is the
only option.

‘Abolish the UC" is a formation of
BIPOC, queer, and first generation
graduate student workers and our ac~
complices, drawn together by shared
visions and antagonisms; the univer
sity wasn't made for us, nor is it the
locus of our desires, Below youll find a
collection of toritings dranon from on-
going conversations between current
‘and former graduate workers across the
UCs who twant to abolish the univer-

sity and reimagine our relationship to
Anowledge and its production. Some of
tus bave been fired and cast aside while
thers of us contort in the discomfort of
ur own complicity and contradictions
We've used this space as an opportunity
to talk with oneanother and totelleach
ater bow we got bere; bow we arrived
at abolition; what we mean when rwe
say it, and, importantly, ewhy it mat~
ters, especially for our communities. We
‘awe come to the table with stores to
tell and with lessons we've learned. We
know more is to come, but we sant
10 mark this moment ewith our swords
because ewe are reimagining a cworld
beyond the university.

“There is no salvation for an institu-
tion invested in dispossesion, depor-
tation, and immiseration. The UC
das destroyed communities that came
before us and continues to perpetuate
violence on the peaple and communities
t0 whom we are accountable. We have
been left with no other option. This is
swhy we say: Abolish the UC”

‘This is an invitation—across the UC
and beyond—for old and nec com-
rades, allies, and homies to join usin
fucking shit up. Keep an eye out for
‘forthcoming coritings, projects, and
‘actions from our crew, including. a
UC-wide Disorientation Guide t0 be
released in the fall!

Fallow us and our comrades: disor
‘entation.guide; @a_placetus_ (IG/
Twitter); @AbolishUCD (IG/Twit-
se); @abolishtheue (IG).

AQ: We are here for many reasons,
arriving from just as many different
paths. We come here from places

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»
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of frustration, despair, hope, love,
and inspiration, Exhausted by the
patronizing language of so-called
alles the tokenization of our iden~
ss and_ struggles, we've found
refuge among comraderie and com-
munity.

For first gen and poor students of
color in particular, the univers
conjures up feclings of cognitive dis-
sonance. Commonly viewed as a site
of refuge for those on the underside
of capitalist society, the university
‘banks (literally) on its myth of er-
dition and progress. Yet, once they
arrive, students are forced to con-
form to the folly of professionalism.
Our feelings of uneasiness and anx-
ity are dismissed as maladjustment,
to be remedied by more acclamation
and conformity. This is our sentip-
‘ensar, our holistic way of thinking
with feelings bestowed on us by our
ancestors. It is our way of recogniz-
ing that something is wrong. So we
are conflicted. Caught between the
hopes and dreams of our commu-
nity and the violent nature of the
university that we encounter once

 

‘As we build towards strong and vi-
able alternatives, we will count on
those on the inside, the saboteurs
and subversives. Until we have our
alternatives, we will rely on accom-
plices and guides in the undercom-
‘mons, while we conspire and protect
‘one another.

M: Abolition is a political tradi~
tion—rooted in the abolition of
slavery, colonialism, patriarchy,
and the nation state. Abolition is a

 

framework that asks us to radically
reimagine institutions such as the
UC, in light of this entity's com-
plicity with genocide, slavery, and
the military and prison industrial
complexes. Resisting ncoliberalism,
dismantling capitalism and class
struggle at large, transforms within
this abolitionist framework. Think-
ing and moving deeper, and beyond,
abolition asks us to make these in-
tersectional, complex connections
and to operate from a politic that
makes oppressive systems obsolete
bby building radical and commu-
nity-grounded alternatives. One
‘example of this is the abolitionist
‘work to close prisons and detention
centers while also building restor-
ative systems of community care
and transformative justice in their
place. For the UC, this would mean
dismantling the increasingly privat-
ized, corporatized, and militarized
university—an institution that is
itself already built on a foundation
al violence of settler colonialism,
genocide, and slavery—while also
breathing life into Other ways of
knowing and educating our com-
munities. We follow the path of our
abolitionist ancestors such as Har-
rict Tubman, W.E.B. DuBois, and
Frantz, Fanon, as well as our (r)evo-
lutionary elders and teachers such as
Angela Davis, Ruthie Gilmore, and
Dean Spade. Historical movements
such as the Third World Liberation
Front (TWLF) also guide this work,
especially at the UC, as they envi-
sioned and won a Third World Col-
lege in 1969. As an ongoing strug-
ale, we continue to be guided by the
TWLF’s principles of self-determi-
nation, solidarity, and buildis

 

 
‘education that is directly relevant to
the needs of Black and Indigenous
communities, and communities of
color.

J:Lam writing to my past self Lam
‘writing for every Black girl on a difi-
cult path, Iam writing against a cost
ofliving adjustment in an inherently
unlivable situation, The money that
Tmake as a graduate student is more
than T've ever made at any other job.
‘My participation in the UC system
kills people. Like so much else in
‘our capitalist system, Tam kept alive
by others’ death. When I say I am
‘writing to myself, I mean to remind
myself that I came to the UC with a
spark. We are each carrying a spark
and we each have the tools to turn
this into a true (metaphorical) fire.

So, would I recommend younger
siblings or family to attend this in-
stitution? Not unless they are being
paid well; ask for more money! I
don't know if [had much of a choice
whether or not to attend a violent
and colonial institution. When I
was a kid I was labeled as “college
bound,” which sounded great to my
parents who never had that oppor-
tunity. As I got older, I was explicitly
told that I could “do better” than a
state school: that if I didnt go to a
name brand school, I would never
make anything of myself. So I did
what I thought I was supposed to
do and went to a private, fancy, out-
‘of-state school. The unfathomable
‘expense was supposed to pay off lat-
cr. Instead, it almost killed me and I
dropped out. It did kill some of my
peers; the school had a high suicide
rate and a suspicious amount of ac-

cidental deaths. I did end up finish-
ing my BA at a state school and I
vwas lucky enough to have wonderful
intellectual experiences there, But I
will probably die with student loan
debt. Hopefully, my cosigners will
die first. If there is an answer to
what path I could have taken, I still
don't know it. Go the cheapest path.
Steal whatever you can. Higher ed-
cation wants to extract everything
out of you, Hold on to yourself and
grab what you can.

 

Liked this piece? Venmo @
Coladall to support Abolish
the UC directly.

‘You can read the full essay by
going to atm-magazine.com/
issue-1-wicked/the-irredeemable-
university

or by scanning the QR code

 

‘SUSLBH SUBLBH SUSLBH SYBL6H SULBH SUBL6H SULBH SU3ISH SULBH SUBLGH SURLSH SUBLGH SURLSH SUBLGH SULBH SUBLGH SUBISH SUSLBH SULSH

60
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‘THIS IS THE DEFINITION
OF CLASS HATRED

“Monsieur Dupont

‘Thisselectioncomesfrom the preamble
of the book Nibilist Communism,
The inluence of the text can be felé
throughout this publication and our
(anti-Jpolitics. We include it to belp
‘you understand our positions.

Death appears as the harsh vic~
tory of the law of our ancestors
over the dimension of our becom-
ing. It is a fact that, as prod
tivity increases, each succeeding
generation becomes smaller. The
defeat of our fathers is revisited
upon us as the limits of our world.
Yes, structure is human, it is the
monumentalisation of congealed
sweat, sweat squeezed from old
exploitation and represented as
nature, the world we inhabit, the
objective ground. We do not, in
‘our busy insect-like comings and
goings, make the immediate world
in which we live, we do not make
a contribution, on the contrary we
are set in motion by it; a genera-
tion will pass before what we have
done as an exploited class will seep
through as an effect of objectivity.
(Our wealth is laid down in heav-
cen.) The structure of the world was
built by the dead, they were paid
in wages, and when the wages were
spent and they were dead in the
ground, what they had made con-
tinued to exist, these cities, roads
and factories are their calcified
bones.

 

 

‘They had nothing but their wages
to show for what they had done

and after their deaths what they
did and who they were has been
cancelled out. But what they made
has continued into our present,
their burial and decay is our pres
cnt.

This is the definition of class ha~
tred. We are no closer now to
rest, to freedom, to communism
than they were, their sacrifice has
bought us nothing, what they did
counted for nothing, we have in-
herited nothing, we work as they
worked, we make as they made, we
are paid as they were paid. We do
not possess either our acts or the
world that conditions us, just as
they owned nothing of their lives.

Yes they produced value, they
made the world in which we now
live. The world that now weighs
down upon us is constructed from
the wealth they made, wealth that
was taken from them as soon as
they were paid their wage, tak-
en and owned by someone else,
‘owned and used to define the na-
ture of ownership and the class
domination that preserves it.

We too must work, and the val-
tue we produce leaks away from
us, from each only a trickle but
in all a sea of it and that, for the
next generation, will thicken into
wealth for others to own and as a
congealed structure it will be used
as a vantage point for the bour-
geoisie to direct new enterprises
in new and different directions but
demanding always the same work.

“The class war begins in the dese~
cration of our ancestors: millions
of people going to their graves as
failures, forever denied the expe-
rience of a fall human exis
their being was simply
out. The violence of the bourgeoi-
sie's appropriation of the world of

  

work becomes the structure that
dominates our existence. As our
parents die, we can say truly that

 

c, their lives were for nothing, that

the black earth that is thrown down
onto them blacks out our sky

RUE th
ONG HOT
Stat

nice shit for
fares ah

 

|. SYaL8H SUALBH SwaeH SUSLBH SUaLeH SALAH SUaLeH SUILBH SUALEH SUILH SUALEH SUILBH SUALSH SUILEH SUALEH SUILEH SUALAH SUBLBH SHaLeH
12 HOTERS HBTERS HOTERS HBTERS HOTERS HBTERS HETERS HATERS HETERS HBTERS HETERS HBTERS HETERS HBTERS HETERS HBTERS HETERS HBTERS HETERS.

THE MOST AMERICAN
PRESIDENT

‘Luci!

On Saturday, June 21, president
Donald Trump held one of his be-
loved rallies in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
the first in many months. This ral-
ly served to prepare his re-election
campaign and to boost morale for
both his wavering supporters - and
for himself. The rally, which was
expected to attract more than one
million, suffered from poor turn-
out.

‘Trump returned to the White
House after spending just 3 hours
in Tulsa. As he walked across the
White House lawn, a reporter cap-
tured a picture of him. The picture
displayed a Donald Trump that I
had never scen before. His pos-
ture was hunched. His gaze was
turned downwards. His eyebrows
were furrowed as he frowned. His
suit was unbuttoned to reveal his
red tie hanging limply around his
neck. He carried his signature red
hat crumpled in his left hand.

Ie isa renaissance painting,

 

It is the most expressive and emo-
tive picture of Trump ever taken,
It reveals what a broken and dis-
traught man lies behind the typ-
ical smug aura of the real estate
mogul turned politician. In a way,
it’s humanizing, and it demon-
strates something about the aver~
age Trump voter, and, by extension,
what it means to be American.

‘Trump ran on a platform of Amer~
ican mythology. “Make America
great again” is the assertion that
the United States was once great,
that the legend of American pros-
perity and happiness was once a
reality, that itis no longer, and the
promise that we can return, The
cera we are attempting to make a
return to is a moving target. No
‘one has a conerete idea, And that's
okay. It’s not meant to be concrete;
it’s mythology.

This platform resonated with a
very specific demographic. Tramp
had many different types of voters,
but his most reliable and his most
fervent were white suburbanites,
For this demographic, the myth of
America is very much alive, even
if it isn't achievable, These white
suburbanites, some of which are
affluent, many of which down-
wardly-mobile, hold the values of
the United States as gospel: mer
itocracy, individualism, and above
all, material wealth and the happi-
ness it supposedly entails.

‘These are values upon which
America was founded. Howev-
cr, for many people living in the
United States, these values were
not as heavily internalized. Among
black, native, and other people of
color, support for the philosophies
of Americanism is limited, as the
country was built to exclude them
from the prosperity it created. As
the country shifted to assimilate
these groups by giving them rights
previously only enjoyed by white
‘Americans, the foundational ideals
‘were diffused into their communi
ties, but never fully adopted.

White Americans, the people for
whom America was created, the
people with more generational
wealth than any other racial group
in the United States, the people
who still hold  supermajorities
of federal political positions and
corporate CEO seats, also believe
more firmly in American values
‘than anyone else. America remains
a country built for their own ben-
fit. It is made up of others whom
they have tried to assimilate, but
it remains for the white American,

 

To be an American in the twen-
ty-first century is to be a white
person of the professional or capi-
tal owning class, For all others, the
United States was never built to
accommodate.

This creates a problem when the
United States cannot deliver on
the promises made to its constit~
uents. The belief in the values of
America creates a sort of cognitive
dissonance. Many of these subur-
bbanites are unhappy, as cither they
do not have the wealth their hard
‘work was meant to create or do not
have the happiness their wealth

‘was meant to create. As economic
crises and opioids destroy what's
left of the so-called middle class,
this feeling intensifies.

Donald Trump is the embodi-
ment of the American dream, both
of its material success and of its
profound lack of fulfillment. In
journalist Michael D'Antonio's
interviews for his 2014 book “The
Truth About Trump’, the billion-
aire states that his favorite song is
Peggy Lee's “Is That All There Is?”
He explains that he finds the lyrics
relatable in his own life.

“I's a great song because I've had
these tremendous successes and
then I'm off to the next one. Be~
cause, i’ like, ‘Oh, is that all there

He went from rich to richer, liv-
ing in opulence and luxury most
cannot imagine, and yet he seems
perpetually unsatisfied. He went
from an ultra-wealthy elite
to becoming the most famous man
in the world in the office of the
president, but only expressed joy
at proving his detractors wrong
rather than being proud of his
accomplishment for its own sake,
His affinity for petty arguments
and name-calling does not exude
the energy of someone who is
confident, but rather of someone
who is deeply insecure. Trump
identifies and shares many of the
same anxieties as his voters, and
this endears himself to them. The
‘American dream has failed him in
much the same way it has failed
his supporters.

 

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a
1 HOTERS HBTERS HOTERS HBTERS HOTERS HBTERS HETERS HBTERS HETERS HBTERS HETERS HBTERS HETERS HETERS HETERS HATERS HETERS HGTERS HETERS.

When capitalism enters stages of
precarity, it tends to coincide with
an increase of support for nation-
alism, authoritarianism, and even
fascism among the more affluent
or privileged classes, in hopes that
the status quo will be restored.
This is repeated time and time
again throughout the world.

In his first run for office, his
rhetoric and campaign promises
sparked the ire of the democrat-
ic establishment and media class.
‘They feared that he would become
the first truly fascist president if
lected. His platform of right-
‘wing populism drew comparisons
to the rise of authoritarianism in
other countries,

After four years of his administra~
tion, there is no indication that we
have significantly accelerated the
decline towards fascism. Certain-
ly not when we consider policies
and actions that would have been
taken under a Clinton or Cruz
presidency. The United States has
been in a steady downward spiral
towards fascism for decades, from
the destruction of labor unions to
the militarization of the police to
the creation and expansion of the
surveillance state and institutions
such as the DHS and ICE. This
downward slope remains constant
throughout both Republican and
Democratic presidencies. Trump
isa continuation of this trend. He
expresses sympathies for fascistic
policies, but does not seek to enact
them with the fervor one might
expect, because he is not ideologi-
cally driven towards fascism.

 

One of Trump's most repeated
selling points is that “he is not a
politician”, He's a New York real
estate mogul whose search for at-
tention and approval landed him
almost by accident into the White
House. He is fundamentally dif-
ferent than many who take the
political fast-track from either
Tyy League school or military of-
ficer to senator or congressperson,
and as such does not share the
same motivations or goals. Trump
is more motivated by good-old-
fashioned personal gain than by a
burning inner desire to perpetuate
capitalism or American empire.
‘When he expresses sympathies for
fascism, they do not necessarily
entail a desire to actually do the
work of enacting them.

 

‘Trump, like his voters, is discon-
tent and wants the world to return
to the idyllic ‘Leave It to Beaver’
world of yesteryear that never
actually existed, Fascism is char~
acterized by an intriguing lack of
creativity coupled with cowardice.
‘The fascist would say instead of
adapting to the changing world,
let's retain the structure and hier-
archies of the existing world, and
force others to either fit into that
structure or be removed entirely,
because the uncertainty of creat-
ing a new system is more terrifying
than the atrocities we will commit
upholding the skeleton of the old
system. They are impatient and
‘want the world to return to a sense
of stability by any means - but
many of them do not have a desire
to do the work of achieving that.

 
In this regard, Trump is exactly as
his voters. Trump is a non-politi-
cian who achieved political office
but retained his general disinterest
for ideologically driven politics
He is a man of the people in that
he is just as discontent and inse-
cure as the white suburbanites
who put him in office. His wealth
and privilege has allowed him no
comfort, He is alienated, searching
endlessly for anything to keep him
‘occupied and distracted.

After the 2016 presidential elec~
tion, liberals across the media

landscape indignantly cried “this
is not us. This is not who we are.”
‘They held the idea that the elec~
tion of Donald Trump was an ab-
cerration, a break from tradition.
Un-American. I posit a count-
cer-argument: this is who we have
always been

‘We cach grasp at the loose threads
hoping to find our happiness and
watch helplessly as the country
unravels. What could be more
American than that?

 

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HOTERS HATERS HETERS HBTERS HETERS HBTERS HETERS HATERS HETERS HATERS HETERS HGTERS HETERS HBTERS HETERS HBTERS HETERS HBTERS HETERS

7 REASONS TO
HATE THE SEASON

It’s 2020, and it's that time again.
Election season—and hate is in the
air. Finally, many leftists in favor of
voting are beginning to slide away
from this bias, hopefully ready to
lay down the last vestiges of liber-
alism, or even move past the left.
What's more likely, however, is that
a shiny new candidate—a Bernie
2—will come along and, provided
clections continue, they'll fall back
into their old campaign-obsessed
ways, This isn't addressed to them
alone. The following essay is also
for those who ask, “Why wouldn't
you vote?”; who say it’s harmless;
‘who say it's a “strategy.”

 

Voting: it’s the reason for the sea~
son (election season). And we hate
every second of it.

1/IT’S ALL JUST A GAME.

It’s unclear whether the political
game erodes empathy or shows
how little there was to begin with.
Maybe both. Either way, election
season is a great time to find out
who has their head all the way up
their own ass—it's interesting that
electoralists will use often throw
accusations of moral superiority
complexes at those who don't vote,
and then go on to be ethically
bankrupt while acting as the actual
holier-than-thou party.

 

With the USPS in danger of being
dismantled, many people worry
that their medications, including

time-sensitive meds, rely on the
USPS. Many people who live in
rural areas, including reservations,
are at risk of not getting mail ser-
vice at all. But the electoralists
dont think of the people—they
think of the game, So it imme-
diately became a question of vot-
ing—who cares if you can't get your
insulin? What matters more is that
you won't be able to vote. It's all
about the Republicans attacking
voter rights so that not as many
people can vote Democrat in No-
vember,

 

Here's an excerpt from an article
in the Rapid City Journal, out of
Rapid City, South Dakota, that
details some impacts that closing
USPS offices in rural communi
ties, particularly those on reserva~
tions, has:

Reservation residents depend
upon their local post offices to
keep their mailed medicines and
Social Security, veterans’ benefit
and other checks safe. They do
their business at the post office,
buying money orders to pay
their monthly expenses, Cus-
tomers of the Allen, Manderson
and Wounded Knee post offices
frequently walk long distances
or wait days to use precious gas
to collect their mail.

Now, those same people are
staggered by the news that the
USS. Postal Service has placed
the three post offices on a list
of almost 3,700 post offices un-
der review for possible closings.
Eighty small post offices across
South Dakota are on the list,
including 11 on or near reserva-

 

This may sound like a coordinated
attack on the part of the Trump
administration to restrict voting
access. Except the article, entitled
Post Offices Vital to Reservation
Communities, was published in
2011, during Obama's first term
in office, and is one of hundreds of
similar articles from its time. The
Obama Administration also made
attempts to gut the postal service,
so it's a little bit bizarre for liberals
to use this as a reason to vote blue.
‘More than that, it comes across as
callous towards those impacted by
post office closings and mail box
removals in both 2011 and 2020.
It’s too bad that your life or live~
lihood might suffer—what's worse
is that my team might lose

 

‘This type of thinking can be seen
elsewhere, What was once con-
sidered “extreme” weather is now
the norm, In August, a massive
derecho—a large line of storms—
swept through Towa, causing wide~
spread destruction that included
flooding, power outages, and crop
damage. In the following week,
too many liberals took to social
media to lament how this would
impact Iowa voters’ ability to go to
the polls. Something similar hap-
pened as the west coast burned, as
if Trump caused the wildfires that
have been intensifying for similar
reasons, Frenzied liberals again
implored everyone to vote—but
voting doesn't put out fires. And
T Cook, Andrea. "Post Ofces Vital To
Reservation Communities”. Rapid City
Journal, 2011.

it’s worth noting that the west
coast is all blue. More important
ly, Indigenous people and envi-
ronmentalists have pointed out
again and again that wildfires are
intensified by settler governments
banning of traditional controlled
burns, which leads to a buildup of
detritus that, once inevitably ignit
ced, grows out of control. This will,
like ecological collapse, happen
regardless of political leadership
as long as the land remains under
colonial occupation,

 

OF course it's possible to be con-
cerned over how these events are
affecting people and also about
voting, ifthe latter is what you care
about. But to jump first to how any
decision or crisis will impact your
candidate and last to how actual
humans are faring—and how vot-
ing will have any real impact on
any of this? It feels asinine. Both
parties invest heavily in fossil fu-
cls. The democrats dropped ending
fossil fuel dependence from their
platform as usual, choosing to
continue subsidizing dirty energy.’

2 Wian, Umar "Democrats Have Made A
Puzaling Decision To Drop Their Demand
‘To End Fossil Fuel Subsidies, Fos 2020

[As of September 2020, the Democrats

Ihave wavered on whether oF not to inclide
climinating fos fel subsidies as part of
thei platform. This kind of indecision is pare
‘ofthe problem of electoral politics, eather
‘than an argument i favor of public opinion
changing the tide. Alo, che time to end
fossil ae sbsiies—abare-minimam ap
proach—was decades ago As stated, we do
hot have dime forthe spineless inaction and
reaningles tall provided by this party The
catastrophe collapses prdicted—again—
ead ago are sleady filling int place
‘This inches the natural disasters” men
Soned in the ist par of this essays it should

 

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“The Paris Agreement was an infa-
mous failure.’ And the severity of
storms like the recent Iowa dere~
chos is directly linked to climate
change. Something that both par-
ties—all political parties, consid-
ring that even the Greens’ plans
tend to be vague since they won't
win anyway—refuse to address in
any real, material capacity. It’s a
game, and it's a game of worth
less platitudes and empty promises
that the politicians will renege or
dither on once in office.

Electoral obsession is the game
of treating people like pawns and
then yelling at those very same
people for being upset at this
‘treatment. I’ big talk about "mar
ginalized folk” and accusations of
privilege that are more often than
not thrown right back in the fac~
ces of marginalized folks. In fact,
if you are from any marginalized
demographic and have expressed a
disdain for political theater, there's
a high likelihood that some liber-
al has insinuated that you actually
dontt know what's best for yourself

‘be noted ow both parties tery alle im
liecting resources to preparation and aid,
as isthe supposed purpose of politics. The
‘Green Nev Deal would have done very ite
in terms of addressing climate change, and
the fact that che Democrats so aggressively
sabotage their slightly leftward snd overall
‘more popular membership should also seve
as an indictment aguinstreformism,

3. Leahy, Stephen, "Most Countries Arent
Fitting 2030 Climate Goals, And Everyone
Will Pay The Price". nationaleographiccom,
2020; Alla, ill “Dangesous Incremenalisan
‘OFThe Paris Agreement” Glbal Environ-
imental Polite Vl. 19 No 1. MIT Pres. 20195
Splash, Clive. “This Changes Nothing: The
Paris Agreement To Ignore Reality” Tglor
Francs, 2016,

 

 

if you abstain from voting, There's
an assumption that if you're
against voting then you either ha-
vent thought it through or are too
privileged to care.

2/ REPRESENTATION IS RE-
PRESSION

An accusation often thrown by the
pro-voters at anyone who immedi-
ately doesn't put all their oppres-
sion cards on the table is one of
“privilege.” One darkly funny side
effect of this tendency erops up oc-
casionally: the person making the
accusation will be more privileged
than whoever they're whining at
(the idea that privilege is a game
of points to be added up is a gross
oversimplification that T'm not
trying to imply here). White lib-
erals calling certain anti-electoral
Black people “privileged” for not
voting is a bizarre cognitive leap,
but it happens, especially on the
internet. But this is all aneedot-
al, so let’s pretend that everyone
who doesn't vote does so because
they're too privileged to care or
be harmed in any significant way
Here are two of the roads we can
take here:

 

First, why should they? If someone
doesnt vote out of privilege, then
‘wouldn't you wane them to abstain
anyway?

Because, second, why would they
have any motivation to vote in
your favor—provided you're all
‘concerned with human rights and
‘equality and whatever other En
lightenment buzewords you think
have meaningful value? Those

 
with privilege will tend to vote
with their own interests in mind;
all historical precedent points to
this. You can try and obfuscate
this by, for example, acting like
rural whites voted for Trump be-
cause they're rural and not because
they're white, Whiteness has ev-
cerything to do with the way they,
like their counterparts in the
ies and suburbs, voted. Wouldn't
the vote of the less privileged have
more sway if the privileged ab-
stained from v

 

Often the next line of argument is
that many “underprivileged” folks,
such as many immigrants and in
particular undocumented immi-
grants, cant vote, and so the “priv-
ileged” must wield their electoral
power in the favor of those who
cant vote. There are problems with
this idea. The political philanthro-
py idea is patronizing to the point
of insult. There’s no such thing as
being a voice for the voiceless—
people are “voiceless” because
they're being talked over. And
that’s what our electoral system is.

Acting like anyone's interchange-
able is dehumanizing, and even
pretending that some shared iden-
tities equals common goals, es-
pecially considering the fact that
many of these groupings ~such as
the “LGBT community” or “Lat-
in Americans” or “Asian Ameri-
cans"—are not coherent enough
to be meaningful. You can even
belong to the same “communi-
ty” as someone else...while also
not, reaily, belonging to the same
community because of this lack

 

of coherence and nebulousness of
terminology as it relates to “com-
munity.”

OF course, most arguments in the
direction of representation are also
predicated on the idea that the U.S.
system is truly representational. “If
we only had this group represent
ced in congress, then they could
‘empower their community!" is the
same argument that supporters
of capitalism make; “If only this
group could own more businesses,
the revenue will go back into their
communities.” Exploitation is not
‘empowerment. Politicians exploit
“their” constituency like capital
ists exploit “their” community.
‘When someone is elected into
fice, their relationship to whatever
community they claim changes—
they now have power. ziq put it
suecinetly: “Giving a person power
and expecting them to not use it
to cement even more power for
themselves is as foolish as Charlie
Brown trying to kick the football
while Lucy holds it."*

 

 

A politician makes sacrifices to
get into office, and those sacrific~
es are invariably at the expense of
the most vulnerable among “theit”
constituency to appeal to the vot-
cers with the most capital—this
only becomes more egregious as
fone moves up the ladder from
local to federal. As Lucy Parsons
pointed out over a century ago
in The Ballot Humbug, it’s “mon-
ey and not votes” that “rules the
people. Capitalists no longer care

 

ig Do Anarchines Vote In Stare lec-
tions” 2018. Originally posted on raddle. me.

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to buy the voters, they simply buy
the ‘servants’ after they have been
lected to ‘serve."The idea that the
poor man’s vote amounts to any-
thing is the veriest delusion. The
ballot is only the paper veil that
hides the tricks.”

Your vote doesn't matter.

3/CITIZENSHIP IS AN INSULT

Citizenship, like representation,
like progress, is also_predicat-
ed on assimilation and coercion.
It’s a “Join, or Die” system. Why
clamor for recognition from the
state? For services like healtheare
and infrastructure? Why is a state
even necessary in instances like
this? Infrastructure projects. are
put in place in service to colonial
interests and/or in service to cap-
ital; see the railroad and highway
systems as examples, Even free
healtheare under capitalism is only
in place to ensure a more produe-
tive proletariat

  

I's insulting to tell someone priv-
ileged with citizenship that they
must vote for the good of the
noncitizen who cannot vote. The
ICE concentration camps will not
be voted away. The citizen cannot
exist without the noncitizen—the
exploiter cannot exist without the
exploited. This means that suffer-
ing on a grand scale will happen
as long as the empire is in place.
Even if the U.S. could be voted
into a functional social democracy
‘or welfare state, this all comes at
the expense of someone. Do the
lives of the poor in Afghanistan,
Iran, Palestine, Yemen, Nigeria,

 

 

 

 

Pakistan, and all the other places
the US. destabilizes and reigns
terror upon not matter as long as
you can share in the spoils of war?
You cannot harbor a desire for a
piece of the wealth with no regard
for where that wealth comes from.
Participation in this system legiti-
mizes this. But this is the part of
the argument that electoralists are
often calling moralistic and theo-
retical—and if Not America exists
only in the realm of theoretical,
then sure, It’s pure theory. A lot
of arguments center themselves
‘on how electoralism doesn't help,
‘but in many ways it's an active dis-
service to the communities that
liberals and leftists always wanna
pretend to care so much about.

4/ PROGRESS IS A MYTH.

In The Ballot Humbug, Parsons
also said: “We know there never
‘was a law passed that ever prevent
‘ed one single crime from being
committed.” Likewise, there isnt
a single social issue or societal ill
or injustice or policy of depravity
that has been voted into oblivion,
Maybe the earliest progressives
and communists who ran for of-
fice in vain can be forgiven, a Ii
tle; there wasnt yet a precedent for
progressives in office, or failing to
be placed in office. It should, how-
ever, be noted that many of their
contemporaries were already of
fering criticisms of the electoral
system. The idea that everything
will naturally “get better” if we can
put the right people in power as
today’s progressives seem to think
isn't supported by any historical
evidence

 

 
Slavery didn't end. They work on
plantations in the South, fight fires
in California, and work in facto-
ries New York. The slaves of today
may be given air conditioning and
$3 an hour for their more stren-
uous labor (minimum wage for
prisoners is eighty-six cents)—is
that progress? It's no coincidence
that that the U.S. prison popula-
tion is heavily racialized—most
statistics put the percentage of
Black inmates at around 40%,
even though Black Americans
make up less than 15% of the total
US. population.* Louisiana State
Penitentiary is built on the site
of a former plantation, a majori~
ty of its population is Black, and
many of them get assigned to till
the same plot of soil worked by
slaves less than two centuries ago.”
Is this kind of progress significant
‘enough to warrant a continuation
of this system, so that maybe, in an
alternate universe where climate
change doesn't kill us all by then,
‘maybe our great grandchildren can
live to see the day where prisoners
are paid $8 an hour? The evils of
the American empire don't wither
away under electoral or legislative
pressure—concessions granted
have always taken protests (usually
less-than-peaceful), riots, and, in
the case of “officially” ending chat-

 

 

5 Sayer Wendy" How Much Do
Incarcerated People Earn In Each State?

rsonpolic org 2017
{6 “BOP Statistics: Inmate Race” Federal
Buea of Prisons, bp gov, 2020,

7 “Angola State Prison: A Short History |
Voices Behind Bars: National Public Radio
And Angola State Prison’. Columbia Unicer-
tity. ccnmtl columbia eda

 

 

tel slavery, a whole civil war. And
‘even then they had to put a provi-
sion in the 13% amendment—that
infamous line: except as punishment
for a crime

‘This may seem counter intuitive
considering suffrage was one of
the “rights” allegedly fought for by
activists of the past. But that ar-
gument—that “people fought for
y/our right to vote so you should
‘Show y/our gratitude by voting”—
flattens “activists” of the past into
‘one single-minded Movement.
That's not how anything ever
works. Anarchists like Emma
Goldman and Lucy Parsons crit
icized their contemporaneous
women's suffrage movement. Par-
sons referred to electoralism as a
“modern delusion” in 1905; Gold-
man, in her 1911 essay Woman
Suffrage, called it “fetich worship.”
In the essay, Goldman points out
some of contradictions that were
clear even at the time:

 

‘The poor, stupid, free American
citizen! Free to starve, free to
tramp the highways of this great
country, he enjoys universal suf-
frage, and, by that right, he has
forged chains about his limbs.
The reward that he receives is
stringent labor laws prohibiting
the right of boycott of picketing,
in fact, of everything, except the
right to be robbed of the fruits
of his labor.

 

 

Following that, Woman Suffrage
also acts as an early criticism of
the empty. representation-based
politics so prevalent in today’s pro-
gressive circles:

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[Vet all these disastrous re~
sults of the twentieth-century
fetich have taught woman noth-
ing. But, then, woman will purify
politics, we are assured.

Needless to say, am not opposed
to woman suffrage on the con-
ventional ground that she is not
equal to it. I see neither physi-
cal, psychological, nor mental
reasons why woman should not
have the equal right to vote with
‘man, [...] Since woman's great-
est misfortune has been that she
was looked upon as either angel
or devil, her true salvation lies in
being placed on earth; namely,
in being considered human, and
therefore subject to all human
follies and mistakes. Are we,
then, to believe that two errors
will make a right? Are we to
assume that the poison already
inherent in politics will be de-
creased, if women were to enter
the political arena?

Ideas of representation within the
current status quo go hand-in-
hand with ideas about “progress,”
because we're told that an increase
in representation is a positive side
cffect of this progress, But this is
based on assimilationist ideas—
representation is the reward for
assimilation, and assimilation is
predicated on subjugation. The
“minorities” must always com-
promise—you must not seem too
threatening to the establishment
to be rewarded with representa-
tion. You must be the right kind
of Black, “hardworking” if you're
disabled, an unwaveringly patriot-
ic immigrant, a white-picket-fence

gay, a trans person who “tries.”
Progress as assimilation is not a
forward march; it's cyclical, a dog
chasing its own tail. It’s based on
compromise after compromise un-
til you've been chewed up, re-di-
gested and shat out enough times
to be acceptable, In Vating is Not
Harm Reduction, the author or au~
thors discuss the ties between as~
similation and the “Native vote”:

In 1887, U.S. Congress passed
the General Allotment Act,
‘more commonly known as the
Dawes Act, which was designed
to expedite colonial invasion, fa-
cilitate resource extraction, and
to further assimilate Indigenous
Peoples into the colonial social
order. The Dawes Act marked a
shift from a military strategy to
an economic and political one
where reservations were sepa-
rated into individual lots, with
only male “heads of households”
to receive 160 acres with any re-
‘maining lands put up for sale to
white invaders who flocked in
droves to inherit their “Mani-
fest Destiny.” Indigenous Peo-
ples who accepted allotments
could receive U.S. citizenship,
and although this was the first
congressional act to provide the
status, it came at the expense of
sacrificing Indigenous People’s
cultural and political identities
in many ways, particularly by
further fracturing the integrity
of Indigenous matriarchal  so-
cieties. Under the Dawes Act,
Indigenous lands were reduced
from 138 million to 52 million
acres, In 1890, the overall Indig-

 

 
enous population was reduced
to about 250,000 from tens of
millions at the time of initial

 

European invasion. In contrast,
the colonizer's U.S. population
had increased to 62,622,250 the
same year.

Led

USS. citizenship was imposed to
destroy Indigenous sovereignty
and facilitate mass-scale land
theft. To this day, the “Native
vote” is bound to assimilationist
conditions that serve colonial
interests.

Genocide, like slavery, is ongo-
ing and bipartisan. ‘The Standing
Rock protests happened under the
Obama administration, which was
also able to stymie “progressive”
movements like Occupy and then
for a time Black Lives Matter.
Electoralism does not propel us
gradually towards a freer state of
being. You cannot tweak the sys-
tem or adjust the course to some
idyllic perfect democracy because
the system is functioning as in-
tended; why would wealthy white
racists of the eighteenth century
care to conceptualize a system that
could be used to put them on the
same level as even poor whites, let
alone the slaves that many of them
“owned”?

5/ VOTING IS NOT DIRECT
ACTION

‘This is going to be brie, since the
answer to this claim is: no, No, i's
not

 

“Direct action” means. different
things in different circles. “The

IWW, Industrial Workers of the
World, used the term for gild-
ced age strikes. Anarchists, com-
munists, leftists, activists, et al.
will talk about “propaganda of
the deed,” sabotage, varying lev-
els of violence and nonviolence,
terrorism, And it can be nebu-
lous at times, especially when the
more useful conversation revolves
around “What works?” rather than
semantics. But one thing is clear
for sure: voting is not direct action.

 

In Direct Action: An Ethnography,
David Graeber gives insight into
some difference between direct
action and civil disobedience, both
terms often abused by liberals:

 

Typically, one practicing civil
disobedience is also willing to
accept the legal consequenc-
es of his actions. Direct action
takes matters a step further. The
direct actionist does not just
refuse to pay taxes to support a
militarized school system, she
combines with others to try to
create a new school system that
operates on different principles.
She proceeds as she would if the
state did not exist and leaves it
to the state's representatives to
decide whether to try to send
armed men to stop her.

Direct action is about asserting
yourself, That can mean making
demands via strike; it can_mean
throwing Molotovs. The former
may be demanding better work-
ing conditions; the latter may be
trying to set a building on fire.
There is a goal in mind to directly
achieve, Electoralism is indirect by

 

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nature. There are no demands to
voting—just, again, vague prom-
ises. Direct action doesn't necessi-
tate demands, but if the end goal
is getting a candidate elected and
nothing more (than vague promis-
cs) then what's the point in calling
it direct action? There's no direc
tion and there’s no action. Calling
voting “direct action’ doesnt make
sense. That's like saying voting is
“mutual aid” because some social
services may or may not be allot-
ted to your area by the candidate
you voted for. Voting is begging
for scraps—that’s an antithesis to
direct action. Gracber often de~
fines “direct action” as some iter~
ation of how it “means insisting
‘on acting as if one is already free.”
Emma Goldman discusses direct
action in Anarchism: What It Really
Stands For (1910):

Even were the workers able to
have their own representatives,
for which our good Socialist
politicians are clamoring, what
chances are there for their hon-
esty and good faith? One has but
to bear in mind the process of
politics to realize that its path of
good intentions is full of pitfalls
wire-pulling, intriguing, flat-
tering, lying, cheating; in fact,
chicanery of every description,
whereby the political aspirant
can achieve success. [..] Time
and time again the people were
foolish enough to trust, believe,
and support with their last far-
thing aspiring politicians, only
to find themselves betrayed and
cheated.

[el

 

 

‘The political superstition is still
holding sway over the hearts
and minds of the masses, but the
true lovers of liberty will have no
more to do with it. Instead, they
believe with Stirner that man
has as much liberty as he is will-
ing to take. Anarchism therefore
stands for direct action, the open
defiance of, and resistance to, all
laws and restrictions, economic,
social, and moral. But defiance
and resistance are illegal. Therein
lies the salvation of man. Every-
thing illegal necessitates integri-
ty, self-reliance, and courage.

If you'e into lobbying and politics
and clectoralism, if descriptions
and depictions of actual direct
action make you angry or scared
because people are being inconve~
rienced or hurt or even killed or
property is being damaged, then
you need to stop playing radical
‘dress-up and stop using “direct ac~
tion” as an excuse for your elector-
al fetish or go call your senator or
something you approve of.

6/ VOTING IS NOT HARM RE-
DUCTION

Voting is not harm reduction. For
electoralists making the “voting
is harm reduction’ argument, this
seems like a case of, “I saw this
term and assumed that T knew
what it meant.”In the essay Voting
Iin't Harm Reduction, An Indige-
nous Perspective, published on In-
digenous Action’s website, the au
thor or authors actually spend less
time discussing the issue of harm
reduction, instead using this myth
to transition into a discussion on

 

 
how voting has and continues to
be a tool of colonialism via the co-
cerced assimilation of Indigenous
peoples in the “United States” (al-
though this is true elsewhere too).
Still, in the beginning of the essay
they point this out:

We dont dismiss the reality that,
on the scale of U.S, settler colo-
nial violence, even the slightest
degree of harm can mean life or
death for those most vulnerable.
What we assert here is that the
entire notion of “voting as harm
reduction” obscures and perpet-
ates. settler-colonial violence,
there is nothing “less harmful”
about it, and there are more ef-
fective ways to intervene in its
violences.

[el

[V]oting can never be a survival
strategy under colonial rule. It's
a strategy of defeat and victim-
hood that protracts the suffering
and historical harm induced by
ongoing settler colonialism. And
while the harm reduction senti-
‘ment may be sincere, even hard
won marginal reforms. gained
through popular support can
be just as easily reversed by the
stroke of a politician’s pen. If
voting is the democratic partic-
ipation in our own oppression,
voting as harm reduction is a
polities that keeps us at the mer-
¢y of our oppressors.

 

 

“Harm reduction” was actually a
term coined by—and subsequent-
ly stolen from—drug abuse advo-
cates. Harm reduction is about not
punishing addicts for their addic~
tions, and allowing people to en-

 

 

‘gage with substances on their own
terms rather than taking a prohi-
bitionist or carceral approach. It's
about acknowledging that some
folks may not desire to live a “so-
ber” lifestyle, allowing them to
seek help on their own terms if
they desire it. It neither glorifies
nor shames substance use. Giv-
ing intravenous drug users clean
syringes to cut down on disease
transmission and giving naloxone
to opioid users to prevent death
from overdose are harm reduction
initiatives.

 

Consider how this applies to vot-
ing. Does it?

Would it be helpful to conceptu-
alize participation in Politics as
an addiction? Probably not. You
might be able to make a case for
that sort of thinking, but I won't;
personally I think Goldman's de-
scription of it being akin to a fe~
tish (in the anthropological sense)
is more apt. But what would harm
reduction look like in this case?
‘Would it look like coercing people
into voting and participating in
politics, or—following the spit
of the harm reduction coinage—
would “harm reduction” in politics
not mean attempting to minimize
political participation—mean-
ing, minimize reliance on system
that stands against the proletari-
at, against any real climate action,
against any real change? Is repli-
cating these patterns of coercion
“harm reduction,” even if you want
to filter harm reduction’ through
a political lens? This framing is
flawed, but it seems like a more

 

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apt conclusion to be drawn from
it would lead towards an approach
of mutual aid instead of diverting
resources that could provide direct
aid to those in need to campaign-
ing. Would you not rather distrib-
ute food than campaign stickers?

 

7/ WE CAN DO BETTER, AND
MORE

But can't we do both?

“They say to vote to make it better
in the “short term;” but the “short
term” is also the “long term” if a
one ever points out that we could
be making things better in the
here and now instead of dumping
all the effort and resources into
campaigning. ‘The meanings of
short term and long term are ci
stantly shifting in their meanings.
Voting is a necessary evil because
it “helps” people in the short term
by providing them with social ser-
vices once Your Candidate is in
office, But we need to donate to
‘campaigns and put all this money
into campaigning costs and adver-
tising and shit like that instead of
giving the money and resources
directly to the people who need
them because we gotta think about
the “long term.” The goalposts are
always changing here

You're asking people to gamble
with their lives

 

 

 

 

 

“The gamble is this: throw your
‘current resources into a campaign
hoping for a bigger return—a re-
turn that will always include com-
promise—ally yourself with dirty
money if you want to win, beget
ting even more compromise, and

 

    

if Your Candidate wins, then you
might get some services or infra-
structure or what you asked for.
You might also get nothing be-
cause the candidate gets bought
‘out by those with capital. If Your
Candidate does not get elect
ced, all that time and money has
been thrown away completely and
you, again, get nothing. Less than
nothing--all the money put into
paying campaigners and advertis-
ing is lost, and that’s money and
time that could have directly fed
and clothed families, gotten peo-
ple housed, filled in potholes, or
worked towards whatever else it is
you wanted fixed. Why is it such
‘blasphemy to point out that the
winning move might just be to
avoid the game altogether? Your
Candidate needs you, but you need
them less than you think.

And so you may think that, well,
wwe can focus on both local proj-
ects and campaigning. But so
much gets shoved to the side when
lection season comes in favor of
getting people out and voting. It’s
like a sick sporting event. (To be
honest I'm afraid of DSA’s current
mutual aid projects in a way—
will these projects be abandoned
as soon as the next Bernie comes
along and they feel the need to
devote all the energy they could
be giving to actual people to an-
other doomed campaign instead?
How many times does this have
to happen before hop off the ham-
ster wheel? ) Notice how in these
conversations too how the “short
term’ is always shifting. Why pro-
vide people with resources now
when we might get a shot at more
later? But the “more” might nev-
er come. And we dontt have time
to wait. Climate collapse does not
loom over us—it’s already begun.
‘We must eschew Politics in favor
of ourselves if we want to survive.
“The state knows that it's not need
ed—watch how mutual aid proj-
‘ects are targeted by authorities as
soon as they begin to build some
thing real. You may be inclined to
argue that voting is stifled, so does
it not also pose a threat to the es-
tablishment? Not really. Within
the establishment, there's a push
and pull between assimilation and
direct genocide. As Indigenous
Action Media put it:

 

Historie acts of voter suppres-
sion appear to contradict the
strategy of assimilation, after
all, if white settler politicians
desired so much for Indigenous
Peoples to become citizens, why
then would they actively dis-
enfranchise them at the same
time? This is the underlying con-
tradiction of colonialism in the
ULS. that has been articulated as
the “Indian Problem,” or more
bluntly, the question of annihi-
lation or assimilation?

 

 

Overinvestment in Politics is
learned. helplessness. “We need
better leadership.” Sigh and go
to doing nothing. Instead, think
about where the resources allotted
by politicians come from, and real-
ize that these resources are provid-
ced by people, not lines on paper. We
can do better—and it starts with
divestment from politics.

Further Reading

This essay was meant to be a suc~
cinct and basic summary on some
anti-electoral stances. Two of the
essays mentioned here are from
Anarchism and Other Essays
by Emma Goldman (very easily
found as a .pdf or audiobook; in~
idual essays are hosted on both.
‘Marxists.org andthe Anarchist
Library (theanarchistlibrary.org)),
a good introduction to anarchism
to the unacquainted. All of the fol-
lowing should be available online:
Anarchists Do Not Vote, They
Fight! Black Phoenix Anarchist
Union
Do Anarchists Vote In State
Elections? ziq
‘The Ballot Humbug Lucy
Parsons
‘The Ballot or The Bullet?
Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin
‘The Party's Over CrimethIne
Voting Is Not Harm
Reduction, which can be found
on Indigenous Action Media's
website (www:indigenousaction.

org)

 

  

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ANTI-POLITICS
AND THE POLICE

Politics itself is the policing of free-
dom & unfrcedom. Freedom, as we
are taught in American schools, is
not freedom itself.

It is a doctored variation sold co us.
It helps maintainthe assumption
that the perpetuation of American
politics is itself tied to perpetuation
of freedom. (“Vote or dont com-
plain!”)

Nothing could be further from the
euch,

“This is why those of us with an an-
ti-political position say we are for
anarchy: freedom is a word with t00
much American patriotic baggage.

For the purposes of this piece, I will
refer to the condition of territorial
statelessness (which is akin to free-
dom) as anarchy.

But then what is anti-politics? Is
ic the inversion of politics? (Many
radicals see radical politics as a
grand inversion of bourgeois poli-
tics: now the people are in power. A
formulation I disagree with, which
Pll get to later)

Anticpolitics is the active negation
and consequent abolition of poli-

But what is politics? With the de-
velopment of ancient Greek democ-
racy, the polis (where the term pol-
ities emerges from) denoted a body
of citizens who have a direct say in
local governance. Politics is that
which concerns the polis. And what
is citizenship? Adherence to and
recognition by the State. A dividing
of the population.

But not all citizens under the cur-
rent racial regime of Capital are
equals.

In Black Marxism, Robinson shows
this is by historical design. Black
people have been held outside the
realm of the State's formal equality
since the inception of capitalism
and continue to be so even after the
supposed end of chattel slavery.

1 stand against anti-blackness and
the marker of race, which always
also. means standing against _po-
licing. ‘The State is the wing of di-
rect anti-black domination and the
police its foot soldiers. Thus I am
against the State even in its demo-
cratic forms.

Politics is that which is used to me-
diate between contentious bodies.
A perpetuation of antagonistic con-
tradictions, rarely their resolution:

to form a social peace co ensure
the perpetuation of the current ra-
ial regime of Capital. To keep the
money flowing,

“The perfection of politics can be
found in democracy: class-collab-
oration at its finest. As the writers
of Dixie Be Damned put it, “Whie
supremacy’s greatest ally in this
country has been democracy, not
fascism.” But the anti-blackness of
the racial regime of Capital is more
than just a formalized White su-
premacy.

‘To be an anarchist then is to not
only be against the State bur also
against politics.

Because as @nkayenkoyenkoye puts

“Politics is police.”

“The police as protectors of the po-
litical order physically embody the
law: the bureaucratic wing of the
State, ‘The formalization of domi-

“The latest wave of Black revolt and
the riots it has sparked have had an
cexplicie target: the police and their
power deployed co protect property
against Black life, Bur some bristle
at this target

1 recall back in 2014 a white com-
munist asking in a reading group,
‘when will people rise up against
indirect domination and not just
direct domination?” Which is Eu-
ro-Marxist speech for, “why are
Black people fighting the police and

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not the wage-relation?” As though
the two are not linked.

‘A now common refrain by the rad-
ical miliew is thar the recent riots
worked. ‘That they have produced
results that would have not oc-
curred otherwise. This is true. ‘The
history of revolt in the so-called
United States of America is a testi-
mony to this,

Bur the instrumentalization of the
riot as a thing that ‘works’ misun-
derstands the riot. ‘This is projected
‘onto the riot after the fact. It is an
attempt co make the riot political
‘To make it legible co State power.

“Though the riot, as expressed by
racialized proles, is essentially an-
ticpolitical. The white racist riot is
fascism in its extra-legal street mode
(see the Tulsa Race Riot & the Zoot
Suit Riots)

Rioters are indeed often the disen-
franchised, bur the riot is not an
act for integration into the racial
regime but an act against it. Riot-
fers are nor trying t communicate
a program to be fulfilled by the
State as much as acting directly and
openly against the present state of
things. Otherwise a peaceful march
ending with a stage and a list of
speakers is in order.

“Thus the conclusion of an anti-po-
lice (as well as anti-carceral) posi-
tion is anticpolitics.

Some say we need another politics. I
say the world of politics has had its
day and those against it are the ones
who will carry the day to freedom.

For anarchy 8 communism.
powerlines&thesuspensionoftime:

 

G.ROWANMCK
Driving on the interstate through
the mountains of rural Virginia, I
always end up looking at the pow-
crlines that cut their way across
the landscape ~ paths clear cut
through the trees, making way for
a the progression of the long sus-
pended overhead lines, funneling
energy into the variety of plac~
es where the settler presence has
been condensed. I search for them,
mentally cataloguing their vari-
ty of shapes. The powerline, as a
physical structure, might attract
the attention of many “different”
types of people ~ from “environ-
mental activists,” architects, and
engineers, to “spatial theorists" and
“anti-civ" anarchists. Its presence is
‘uncanny, Its structure automatical~
ly prompts interrogation. The elec~
tric buzz you hear overhead as you
stand beneath the suspended lines,
amongst the plants that common-
ly grow in “wasteland” clear cut
areas, is unsettling and intriguing,
Ieis my hope for this article to in-
terrogate these feelings of unease
and to complicate some common-
ly accepted understandings of time
and its spatial manifestations. This
article is not in any way the most
well researched argument you will
encounter, however I hope to i
minate some of my own reflections
on the broader world, through the
structure of the powerline, in the
hopes that whoever reads this may
find it useful

 

 

 

‘The current state of the world - a
state of extraction and exploitation
maintained through  state-sanc-
tioned violence and a variety of
subconscious, internalized tactics
and beliefs ~ relies upon physical
infrastructure to continue its exis
tence (like how the powerline pro-
vides the transmission of energy
for the continuance of this world's
activities that are fundamentally
high-energy consumption), How-
ever this very “practical” and eas
ily traceable “maintenance of exis
tence” that happens in the physical
landscape also involves maintain~
ing the existence of the ways in
which we move through the world,
the ways that we conceive of the
world, space, and time, and the
maintenance of restrictions placed
upon imagining what is possible.

 

 

To talk about time and its spa-
tial manifestations in the way
that I want to, I will include an
excerpt from Erin Hwang's 2020
book Urban Horror: Neoliberal
Post-Socialism and the Limits of
Visibility. In this book, Huang in-
terrogates the temporal logics that
show up in cinema in a “post-so-
cialise” world, and also highlights
the logic of linear development
that both socialism and capitalism
have operated under in their tan-
gible historical realities. She also
discusses how if we look close~
ly, the current “age” of neoliberal
capitalism did not emerge strict-
ly from capitalism, but from the
historical geopolitical relationship
between capitalism and socialism.

 

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Here is her quote where she ques
tions the logic of the word “post”
itself:

“Although the post- is com-
monly associated with a mode
of anticipation that evokes a dif-
ferent future path, the temporal
logic embedded in the rhetoric
of post-socialism is paradoxical-
ly hyphenated and reverts back
to socialism. The anticipation is
built upon a mode of regression,
where the future is conceptual-
ized through indeterminable re-
lations with a former system that
is neither alive nor dead, Rath-
cr than describing a new era to
come, the post- conjoins a sus-
pended future with a reimagined
past. The result is a new mode
of temporality characterized as
a perpetually extended present
that renders the traditional cat-
cegories of past, present, and fu~
ture obsolete” (pages 14-15).

Apologies to my old teachers for
the extremely long block quote
that they would probably tell me
to cut up or paraphrase. But let's
pick apart what Huang is saying
here regarding the structures of
time, while relating it specifically
to the spatiality of powerlines.

 

I would like to remind you all of
some recurring themes from the
past few months you may be aware
of. For example, the idea that
“2020 is the end of the world.” Or
“Trump is making America de~
scend into fascism — here's an out
line of why that is!” Or “coronavi-

 

  

rus is the end,” Or “they're taking
people away in vans this is where it
all starts.” To go back to a classic,
Desert, these all mirror the way
in which the ecological crisis has
been talked about: “this generation
is the one to deal with the crisis
of the planet,” or “this is the be~
ginning of the end,” Within all of
these statements, we see a continu-
ing logic of postponing the future
~ itis always the “beginning of the
end.” Events currently happening
around people are constantly con-
ceptualized through referencing an
“imagined past,” much as Huang
talked about. “Trump's fascism” is
outlined through referencing the
historical development of fascism
in other locations ~ which, while

 

being a usefull approach to an ex-
tent, simply reimagines America's
past and reifies dominantly ac~
cepted logics of time,

 

‘The present moment is ever sus~
pended, much like the lines be-
‘tween the transmission towers that
cut across Virginia's mountains.
“The future has a definable feature,
either dystopian or hopeful, but
the wreckage or the rebuilding
is pushed to the future in many
common perceptions. The idea of
“this is where the end begins” is
constantly strengthened, to no real
tangible effect. To believe that this
present moment is “the beginning
of the end” is to disregard the fact
that itcan only be viewed as such if
you accept the start of this current
world as the “beginning point” of
significant history.“ THIS is where
it starts” — whether that be Ameri
can fascism, ecological crisis, etc. is
the logic of suspension, a logic that
reveals a subconscious acceptance
that “the end times" did not in fact
begin with colonization, but must
begin now, because “history,” as
dominant ideology assumes, be~
gan with colonization, The linear
progression-centered conception
of time is embedded within these
ideas, as is their refusal to accept
that rather than politics and con-
texts being suspended “moments”
in time, they are locations of prac
tices, tactics, and technologies. If
“antifascism is a set of tactics and
not a temporal moment, “fascism”
cannot be conceived of as
ment” that is ever-present on the
horizon,

 

 

 

In her book, Huang also talk
about the concept of *horror,
cease,” and the “uncanny.”“Horror,”
as an umbrella term for these feel-
ings, is socially produced. Capi-
talism produces specific types of
fears ~ ever-present ones, existen-
tial ones, and inexplicable ones. At
the beginning, I mentioned how
the structure of the powerline ~
its presence, its location, its effect,
the sounds it produces ~ produces
these feclings, at least in myself,
“The powerline reveals the faults in
commonly accepted temporal nar-
ratives ~ ones of “future,” and ones
of “past.” The powerline reveals the
spatial destruction that has been
incredibly normalized in an occu-
pied landscape, its presence being
commonplace ~ and the fact that

lot

 

 

   

 

this spatial destruction is constant-
ly causing harm primarily towards
Black and Indigenous communi-
ties, through industrial infrastruc~
ture, energy projects, and the other
spatial patterns that these infra-
structures produce. The powerline
reveals that the “post” in “post-in-
dustrial” does not herald a bright
future, it simply refers back to the
industrial ~ a deepening continua-
tion of the patterns caused by col-
onization and racial capitalism. It
reveals that the postponed “future”
moment of dystopia is in fact both
the present and the past, and that
the lines between them are not
straightforward, but constantly re~
fer back to one another.

However the powerline reveals an
extremely obvious, yet surprisingly
subtle reminder: that the struc~
tures of oppression in this world,
and the structure of time itself, l-
‘ways possess a physical form. And
if something has a tangible face,
it can be attacked. If there is no
“real” concept of future, what can
be done immediately?

Shout out to the people whose writ
ing, conversation, or teaching bas in
fluenced the formation of ideas that
“ed to me swriting this and everything
Tvorite or think: Adela Amaral, Sibel
Zandi-Sayek, Estelle Ellison, Mads
FE, Negar Razavi, Erin Huang,
and of course all my baters for al-
‘ways motivating me to keep trying
to think more critically.

  

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TREASON TO THE US
IS
LOYALTY TO LIBERATION
T O M Y
PEOPLE

Aseata Shakur

Black brothers, Black sisters, I want
you to know that I love you and I
hope that somewhere in your hearts
you have love for me. My name is
‘Assata Shakur (slave name Joanne
Chesimard), and Iam a revolution-
ary. A Black revolutionary. By that
mean that I have declared war on
all forces that have raped our wom-
cen, castrated our men, and kept our
babies empty-bellied.

Thave declared war on the rich who
prosper on our poverty, the politi-
cians who lie to us with smiling
faces, and all the mindless, heart-
less robots who protect them and
their property.

Tam a Black revolutionary, and, as
such, I am a victim of all the wrath,
hatred, and slander that amerikkka
is capable of. Like all other Black
revolutionaries, amerikkka is trying
to lynch me.

 

Tam a Black revolutionary wom-
an, and because of this I have been
charged with and accused of every
alleged crime in which a woman
vwas believed to have participated.
The alleged crimes in which only
men were supposedly involved,
T have been accused of planning.
‘They have plastered pictures. al-
leged to be me in post offices, air-
ports, hotels, police cars, subways,
banks, television, and newspapers.
They have offered over fifty thou-
sand dollars in rewards for my cap

‘ture and they have issued orders to
shoot on sight and shoot to kill.

Tam a Black revolutionary, and, by
definition, that makes me a part of
the Black Liberation Army. ‘The
pigs have used their newspapers
and TVs to paint the Black Liber-
ation Army as vicious, brutal, mad-
dog criminals. They have called us
gangsters and gun molls and have
compared us to such characters as
john dillinger and ma barker. It
should be clear, it must be clear to
anyone who can think, see, or hear,
that we are the victims. The victims
and not the criminals,

It should also be clear to us by now
who the real criminals are, Nixon
and his crime partners have mur-
dered hundreds of Third World
brothers and sisters in Vietnam,
Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola,
and South Africa, As was proved
bby Watergate, the top law enforce~
ment officials in this country are a
lying bunch of criminals. The pres~
ident, two attorney generals, the
head of the fbi, the head of the cia,
and half the white house staff have
been implicated in the Watergate

‘They call us murderers, but we did
not murder over two hundred fifty
unarmed Black men, women, and
children, or wound thousands of
others in the riots they provoked
during the sixties. The rulers of this
country have always considered
their property more important than
our lives, They call us murderers,
bbut we were not responsible for the
‘twenty-eight brother inmates and

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nine hostages murdered at attica,
‘They call us murderers, but we did
not murder and wound over thirty
‘unarmed Black students at Jackson
State—or Southern State, either.

 

‘They call us murderers, but we did
not murder Martin Luther King,
Je, Emmett Till, Medgar Evers,
‘Malcolm X, George Jackson, Nat
‘Turner, James Chaney, and count-
less others. We did not murder, by
shooting in the back, sixteen-year-
old Rita Lloyd, cleven-year-old
Rickie Bodden, or ten-year-old
Clifford Glover. They call us mur
derers, but we do not control or
‘enforce a system of racism and op-
pression that systematically mur-
ders Black and Third World people.
Although Black people supposedly
comprise about fifteen percent of
the total amerikkkan population,
at least sixty percent of murder vie-
tims are Black. For every pig that is
killed in the so-called line of duty,
there are at least fifty Black people
murdered by the police.

 

Black life expectancy is much low-
cr than white and they do their
best to kill us before we are even
born. We are burned alive in fire~
trap tenements. Our brothers and
sisters OD daily from heroin and
methadone. Our babies die from
lead poisoning. Millions of Black
people have died as a result of in-
decent medical care, This is murder.
But they have got the gall to call us
murderers

 

‘They call us kidnappers, yet Broth
ce Clark Squires (who is accused,
along with me, of murdering a new

jersey state trooper) was kidnapped
‘on April 2, 1969, from our Black
community and held on one mil-
fion dollars’ ransom in the New
York Panther 21 conspiracy case.
He was acquitted on May 13, 1971,
along with all the others, of 156
counts of conspiracy by a jury that
took less than two hours to delib-
crate, Brother Squires was inno-
cent. Yet he was kidnapped from
his community and family. Over
‘two years of his life was stolen, but
they call us kidnappers. We did not
kidnap the thousands of Brothers
and Sisters held captive in amerik-
kka’s concentration camps. Ninety
percent of the prison population
in this country are Black and Third
World people who can afford nei-
ther bail nor lawyers.

 

‘They call us thieves and bandits.
‘They say we steal. Butit was not we
who stole millions of Black people
from the continent of Aftica. We
were robbed of our language, of our
Gods, of our culture, of our human
dignity, of our labor, and of our
lives. They call us thieves, yet it is
not we who rip off billions of dol-
lars every year through tax evasions,
illegal price fixing, embezzlement,
consumer fraud, bribes, kickbacks,
and swindles. They call us bandits,
yet every time most Black people
pick up our paychecks we are being
robbed. Every time we walk into a
store in our neighborhood we are
being held up. And every time we
pay our rent the landlord sticks a
‘gun into our ribs,

‘They call us thieves, but we did not
rob and murder millions of Indi-
ans by ripping off their homeland,
then call ourselves pioneers. They
call us bandits, but it is not we who
are robbing Africa, Asia, and Latin
America of their natural resourc~
es and freedom while the people
who live there are sick and starving.
‘The rulers of this country and their
flunkies have committed some of
‘the most brutal, vicious crimes in
history. They are the bandits. They
are the murderers. And they should
be treated as such. These maniacs
are not fit to judge me, Clark, or
any other Black person on trial in
amerikkka. Black people should
and, inevitably, must determine our
destinies.

Every revolution in history has
been accomplished by actions, al-
though words are necessary. We
must create shields that protect us
and spears that penetrate our ene-
mies. Black people must learn how
to struggle by struggling. We must
learn by our mistakes,

I want to apologize to you, my
Black brothers and sisters, for being
‘on the new jersey turnpike. I should
have known better. The turnpike is
a checkpoint where Black people
are stopped, searched, harassed, and
assaulted. Revolutionaries must
never be in too much of a hurry or
make careless decisions. He who
runs when the sun is sleeping will
stumble many times.

Every time a Black Freedom Fight
cr is murdered or captured, the pigs
try to create the impression that
they have quashed the movement,
destroyed our forces, and put down

the Black Revolution. The pigs also
‘try to give the impression that five
or ten guerrillas are responsible for
every revolutionary action carried
out in amerika. That is nonsense.
‘That is absurd. Black revolution-
aries do not drop from the moon,
We are created by our conditions.
Shaped by our oppression. We are
being manufactured in droves in
the ghetto streets, places like atti-
«a, san quentin, bedford hills, eav-
enworth, and sing sing. They are
‘turning out thousands of us. Many
jobless Black veterans and wel-
fare mothers are joining our ranks.
Brothers and sisters from all walks
of life, who are tired of suffering
passively, make up the BLA.

There is, and always will be, until
every Black man, woman, and child
is free, a Black Liberation Army.
‘The main function of the Black
Liberation Army at this time is to
create good examples, to struggle
for Black freedom, and to prepare
for the future. We must defend
ourselves and let no one disrespect
us, We must gain our liberation by
any means necessary.

tis our duty to fight for our
freedom.

Itis our duty to win.

We must love each other and
support each other.

We have nothing to lose but our
chains.

‘SUSLBH SUBLBH SUSLBH SYBL6H SULBH SUBL6H SULBH SU3ISH SULBH SUBLGH SURLSH SUBLGH SURLSH SUBLGH SULBH SUBLGH SUBISH SUSLBH SULSH

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ON THE BLACK LEADERSHIP
AND OTHER WHITE MYTHS

We Suill Outside Collective
We republish this essay from Ill Will
Editions, “I Will received this
communique from some black friends
in New York. We have republished it
exactly as received. -IWE”

‘Whaat they call, “the black leader-
ship,” does not exist. Let's be se~
rious: what they are talking about
is nothing more than a figment of
the white liberal imagination. That
is, if these so-called black leaders
‘even exist at all, then they can only
be found shucking and jiving a
“woke” white person's head.

Isn't interesting how progressive
whites seem to have a direct line
of communication with black
Ieaders, while everyone else in the
street fails to suffer from the same
delusional schizophrenia? What's
all the more odd is that the voices
that they hear from these magical
negroes always manage say the
same things: “Everyone should
peacefully protest on the side~
walk, because unmediated black
rage makes others uncomfortable.”
“Don’t strike back at that cop even
if he wants to kill you and every-
fone you love.” “I know the man-
ager follows black kids from aisle
to aisle, but still, his store shouldn't
be looted.” In other words, the
message relayed from the sounds
‘on repeat in a white liberal’s head
is to end the black revolt and con-
duct civil disobedience in a m:

 

ner that is appropriate for Karen
and Ethan, not Jamal and Keisha,

It is worthwhile to note that black
people, themselves, never refer to
any mythical black leadership. This
is because we know, full and well,
that all of our leaders, since Mar~
tin and Malcolm, have been killed.
Even our potential leaders, like
Trayvon and Tamir, are gunned
down before they can share with us
their vision, What's more, if they
are not brutally murdered, then
they are locked away forever with
Sundiata, Mutulu, and Mumia,
‘That is, we know that if you speak
with truth and move against op-
pression, then the only way to
avoid the pig's bullet or peniten-
tiary, the modern-day cracker’s
whip or plantation, is to go on the
run like Assata Olugbala Shakur!
In fact, any black person that says
otherwise should be exposed for
what he or she is: a poverty-pimp!

 

After half of century without a
figurchead in the front, the black
youth has shown the whole coun-
‘ty that they are more than capa~
ble of setting their own path and
directing their own iniatives. They
have demonstrated to us a dyna-
mism that can never be reduced
to a homogenous mass following
any one authoritative voice. Para-
doxically, itis the entire spectram
of the black revolt in the streets
that can be identified as leaderless
“leaders,” since they have shown
everyone else what it means to free
yourself,

  
To paraphase James Baldwin's still
apt observation, we black people
are more aware of the inner work-
ings of our pale-face antagonists
than they are of themselves. Con-
sequently, the diagnosis of woke
whitey’s psychological condition is
quite simple: this James Earl Jones,
Carl Winslow, or Rafiki from the
Lion King voice, which bellows off
the walls of their skull, is a defense
mechanism against their inability
to completely repress their own
white superiority complex. What's
also abundantly clear is that the
only way to fully work through
this hang up is to gain even a small
percent of the courage of a black

adolescent and overcome their
white guilt with a fist, a stone, and
4 Molotov cocktail

= We Still Outside
Collective

June 4, 2020

PS, Fuck 121

 

‘SUSLBH SUBLBH SUSLBH SYBL6H SULBH SUBL6H SULBH SU3ISH SULBH SUBLGH SURLSH SUBLGH SURLSH SUBLGH SULBH SUBLGH SUBISH SUSLBH SULSH

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SANITARY CRISIS OR
CRISIS OF CIVILIZATION?

[BRIEF POINTS ON COVID-19 AND.
CCAPITALISA

 

CirsleofEotre Communists

ransated by pont)
This was translated during the
beginning of the pandemic. It was
never publicly shared but here we share
it to, hopefully, foster a connection with
‘anarchists in so-called Latin America
and to make their insights available on
this side ofthe border.

“It is well-known that the Jews
were forbidden to look into the
future. The Torah and the prayers
instructed them, by contrast, in
remembrance. This disenchanted
those «who fell prey to the future,
who sought advice from the
soothsayers. For that reason the
future did not, however, turn into
‘a homogenous and empty time for
the Jews. For in it every second
was the narrow gate, through
which the Messiah could enter.”

— Walter Benjamin, “On

the Concept of History”

“The film universe has bombarded
us to death with its disaster mov-
ies: zombies, aliens, nuclear mon-
sters, sharknados, meteors, viruses,
atomic bombs, and and everything
else you can think of that can af-
fect and compromise existence to
the point of nullifying it or dimin-
ishing it to a minimum, Humani-
ty as a condition of the human as
well as of the animal, has prepared,
at least symbolically, for its disap-
pearance since time immemorial.

‘The appearance of |Covid-19
during the beginning of 2020 is
the materialization of the entire
project that’s been created in fic-
tion, Or at least is its transition to
the material world from an imag-
inative project. However, no mea-
sure adopted by the various states
‘on a global scale come even close
to what fiction had us used to.

“The fictional space that is cinema
had us lying in the distance, both
real and imaginary, to enter a dif
ferent symbolic world. Distance
that we also understand as a pro-
ductive division so as not to con-
fuse what happens on the screen
with what happens on this side,
avoiding falling into the paranoia
of what happens there is true, but
at least has an index of veracity.
‘Now this distance is cancelled out
by the anticipation that cinema
gives to reality.

“The spectacular tone that the ca-
tastrophe takes from its. media
background ends up generating
the idea that every catastrophe
must be traced back to what the
cultural industries have generated
and that, therefore, any disaster
must be spectacularly narrated and
represented. If Frederic Jameson
stated that “it is easier to imagine
the end of the world than the end
of capitalism’, the current situa-
tion that opens with the Covid-19
pandemic requires a reformulation
of the sentence, With all the pub-
lic commentaries in digital and an-
alog spaces, as well as media cov-
‘erage, and on the other hand the
deficient preventative measures

 
that have been taken throughout
the globe, it is evident that if the
current crisis of capitalism is of
a level never seen before, the end
of the world imagined form such
apotheosized

But it is not by chance that this
desired end of the world is so apo-
theosized or that it is exclusively
the product of the culture industry.
In psychoanalytical terms, fanta-
sies about the end of the world are
projections of the individual's own
collapse, due to a splitting of the
self, the result of schizoid process
cs that find in the modern capital-
ist mode of production a breeding
ground capable of projecting and
introjecting both  self-repressive
and narcissistic overflow measures.
The game of double positions, op-
posed and contradictory, around
the same issue is the constitutive
logic of our impoverished subjec~
tivity.

 

 

Returning to the distance between
cinematic representation and what
we could call “everyday life”, it is
that there is a particular feature
that is possible to detect in this
distance between fiction and reali-
ty- in the case of the sp
tence of the latter in a uniform and
totalizing way - and that is that in
the films there is an element that
acts as a factor that is not weight-
ced: the productivity of human la-
bor with its contradictions on the
material plane within the modern
capitalist world.

 

 

 

In a world devoted to productivi-
ty, to the self-valorization of value

and to the devaluation of human
labor, a health crisis is never exclu-
sively of these characteristics be~
cause what is revealed is precisely
the conditions and contradictions
of the mode of production, its so-
cial administration, and the forms
of socialization that result from it.

 

In this sense, the global circulation
of the Covid-19 comes to express
simultaneously the circulation of
goods that precedes it. There is
plenty of historical background:
the bubonic plague from Asia to
Europe, the flu and smallpox from
the "Old World” to the “New
World”, the Spanish flu at the be~
ginning of the 20th century are the
epidemiological corollary of the
global expansion of capitalism. A
microorganism is more lethal than
a device, but this does not fall into
a health issue but into the dimen-
sion of political economy and its
forms of administration and man-
agement.

 

‘The qualitative leap of the mod-
‘em era is to have transformed the
concept of war from a military
to a socio-economic
- the continua-
tion of politics by other means,”
noted Karl von Clausewitz in the
19th century, which is manifested
in states of catastrophe such as the
‘one we are currently experiencing.
Furthermore, we must consider
that a good part of this author's
theoretical intervention took place
when there was, in fact, a distine-
tion between militias and civil so-
ciety, a division that has simulta~
neously been pulverized to

  

‘SUSLBH SUBLBH SUSLBH SYBL6H SULBH SUBL6H SULBH SU3ISH SULBH SUBLGH SURLSH SUBLGH SURLSH SUBLGH SULBH SUBLGH SUBISH SUSLBH SULSH

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the point of homogenizing society
with a permanent war

Society is increasingly seen as a
war machine, which unleashes a
series of forces that are expressed
in the idea of the internal enemy,
whose settlement in the territories
usually coincides with the system=
atic expansion of the logic of capi-
tal into every sphere of life that has
been called *neoliberalism”. In this
way, all political conflict is imme-
diately played out in the economic
field, which becomes the real con-
‘tinuation of the war, beyond the
spectacle of so-called internation
al politics. The economy would be
nothing but the continuation of
politics by other means.

“This state of permanent economic
warfare, since it cannot be resolved
externally as an armed conflict, is
resolved internally by each body as
a state of internal warfare against
everything that hinders the re~
production of capital. This is not
limited to the measures of surveil-
lance and control - in which Ag-
amben emphasizes for example -,
but extends to each individual in
particular, to an internalization of
the conflict in each individual not
only as a productive agent/con-
sumer/citizen, but fundamental-
ly in his experience of the world,
which passes to live as something
immediately hostile, something
that can only be resolved through
the split, as much of itself as of its
‘own experience.

  

We are in the presence of a terror
that is not imposed through di-

rect physical repression, but rather
through the introduction of terror
into the psyche of each individu-
al, which through the exploitation
of fears that ultimately originate
in childish fantasies, allows the
configuration of a schizoid subjec~
tivity, which in its ambivalence is
that which is most apt to receive
and transmit orders while at the
same time rejecting them for not
allowing their own subjectivity to
be built up and unleashed.

Self-confinement to private space
is the internalization of financial
speculation, with its global stock
market collapse and a gradual
collapse of neoliberal econom-
ic policies. The social distancing
propagated these days as a precau-
tionary measure is the internalized
expression of subjective-economic
reification, The policy of self-care
is the consummation of the nar~
cissistic policy of the commodity
society because it is carried out
individually and not collectively,
unleashing individual forces that
at no point intersect with com-
munity forces. Social narcissism is
propagated but not an alternative
‘way of life that opposes what this
type of narcissism makes possible.

‘What is expressed and sought in
private space is the capacity of each
individual not to become bored.
Series, films, books, online activi-
ties, videoconferences, etc., end up
becoming a palliative to the possi-
bility of boredom. In other words,
in the face of a health crisis, what
is important is not to fall into the
void of boredom, What an empty,
alienated, impoverished humanity
wwe have been touched by!

An entirely new poverty has fall-
fen upon us as the enormous de-
velopment of productive forces
and technology encourages, and
imagines, travel in time and space
to remote parts of the universe.
And the reverse of that poverty
is the suffocating wealth of ideas
that came about among the peo-
ple - or rather that came about - as
astrology and the wisdom of yoga,
Christian Science and chiroman-
«cy, vegetarianism and Gnosticism,
scholasticism and spiritism were
revived. Since the material con-
tradiction between real scarcity
and artificial scarcity has not been
resolved, the remaining solution
is “spiritual enrichment’, which
makes this contradiction more tol-
rable.

 

This poverty can no longerbe char-
acterized from the point of view
of material resources or from the
point of view of income distribu-
tion, because the impoverishment
of experience is of a qualitative or-
der. The poverty of our experience
is but a part of the great poverty
that has taken on a new face, as
exact and profiled as that of the
beggars in the Middle Ages. What
is the value of the goods of educa-
tion if experience does not unite us
to them? And where does it lead
to simulate or overlap it, is some
thing that the dreadful hybrid
mesh of styles and worldviews of
the last century has shown us so
clearly that we should consider it
honorable to confess our poverty.

 

Yes, let us confess it: the poverty of
‘our experience is not only poor in
private experiences, but in those of
humanity in general. It is a kind of
new barbarism.

There will be no shortage of those
who profess that the Covid-19
pandemic was spread by inter-
national tourism. They are partly
right in thinking so. The problem
that stands out in this formulation
is that tourism itself and the way
it has developed in the last seventy
years is a product of the systemic
poverty in which we find ourselves.
Why is tourism being developed?
‘Mainly to escape from the dai-
ly life of the world. Nobody goes
as a tourist to a world they know
because everything is familiar to
them. To be a tourist is to expose
oneself in a mediated way to other
worlds, looking for the experience
of what is already known to be
reinforced by checking that what
one is looking for as a novelty is
what was promised beforehand.

 

 

In this sense, tourism is the op-
posite of adventure, an experience
anticipated and closed by the cir~
culation of goods on a global scale.
Where novelty is sought, there is
only the same mercantile world
from which one tries to escape,
reinforcing the condition of a
fractured individuality, crumbled
but not liquidated, which can only
express itself as a nihilism hostile
to the world, The fact that many
infected people have not isolated
themselves from the rest of the
population is a symptom of a gen-
eralized death drive and is in no

   

 

 

  

‘SUSLBH SUBLBH SUSLBH SYBL6H SULBH SUBL6H SULBH SU3ISH SULBH SUBLGH SURLSH SUBLGH SURLSH SUBLGH SULBH SUBLGH SUBISH SUSLBH SULSH

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way an individual but a collective
expression,

There will also be those who end
up raising the flag of the “human
virus” or “virus capitalism”, which
‘turn out to be as irrational as what
provokes this reaction, In this
sense, it is possible to establish a
standardization between “every
man for himself” that some states
have developed to the hygienic
machinery of the totalitarianisms
of the 20th century, which point-
ed to a forced disappearance of a
good part of the population. The
only response that has been taken
as effective against the health cri-
sis of the Covid-19 is the repres-
sion and control of the population,
social techniques widely known
and spread for decades.

  

In spite of this, the productive/
consuming reserve army keeps
moving because production cannot
be stopped and someone ~ always
Another, never I - must be sacri~
ficed. All states have preferred to
save the economy rather than save
the people. This is valid for both
the present and the future, because
although there are already clear
signs of the economic crisis drag-
ging on at least since 2008, as the
days or months go by it will be~
come more acute if it is not saved
from now on. It will be a tomor-
row of people in unemployment
or in growing debt to the banks,
which will be enriched again by
the poverty of the masses and by
the bailouts that all the states have
given them,

 

‘There are those on the left today
who are calling for an old-fash-
ioned protective state, even in
their tactics of the classic labor
movement with certain calls for a
General Strike against Covid-19.
Calls for a stronger state “to pro-
tect us” have also. reappeared,
something we have seen in Chile
since the October revolt and its
prolongation as a continuing social
outbreak, Here the General Strike
cannot be a voluntary call for the
simple fact that, given the pan-
‘rama, it is articulated as a health
measure and that it falls, whether
we like it or not, into a measure
of control. Had we thought about
this regressive possibility?

It is incredible to know that the
limits of the modern capitalist
civilizing process have led us once
again to think that the state is the
only possible salvation in a world
in growing decomposition. We
believe that what is crumbling in
some parts of the Western world is
the neo-liberal state. It is a matter
of seeing how people have reacted
to Covid-19 in Spain, Italy, and
Chile, three countries that are geo-
graphically distant but have insti-
tutional structures that are close to
each other. Since there are health
systems that are very close to each
other, what remains is repression
and control. Nothing has been
preventive but only repressive.

 

 

‘The decomposing neo-liberal state,
with all the nuances that may ex-
ist between the different particular
states, makes it clear that there is
no possibility of salvation in the

 
face of an emergency such as the
‘one we are experiencing today if
it is not through control and re-
pression. This principle is basic be-
cause where the market has been
unleashed as a second power of the
first order in terms of managing
society, it tends to act through the
exponential deployment of the au-
tomatic subject so well known and
which now reaches a point where,
with all its power and arrogance, it
decides more than ever on people's
lives.

It is not surprising, therefore, that
the life of each and every one of us
is worth less than the production
that must be saved at all costs. The
neoliberal state was not put in cri-
sis by mass action or by a microor~
ganism, but by itself by privileging
its administrative role in market
life. The guardian punched him-
self in the face, leaving himself out
of the picture. But he will return
strengthened and prepared to be
another, to return to being himself

‘The only way out of the health
crisis is to question the limits and
projections of the civilizing proj-
ect in which we are developing
and which manifests its crisis in a
rampant way with thousands, and
possibly millions, of deaths all over
the planet from a specific episode.
This humanity is condemned to
death and to a pseudo-life, soit is
necessary that a new type be ges-
tated that learns and incorporates
in the negative what modern-capi-
talist civilization gave it. It is not a
matter of finding the true meaning
of humanity because it does not

cexist as such but only as a specific
historical articulation. There is no
cssential humanity, but there is the
possibility of transforming it, as
history shows. There is nowhere to
rescue the essence of “the human’
again.

‘This reinventive possibility is what
wwe call “communism”,

Circle of Esoteric Communists
Santiago, Chile, March 2020

 
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READING
SUGGESTIONS

‘Whaat follows is a list of books, es-
says, and other projects that helps
sharpen our analysis and reminds us
‘on the need to not just act, but to re~
flect and think. We hope that some
of these will help you too and that
you can talk to your homies about it.

Links to many of these works and
‘groups are available on our website.

Books

Afro-Pessimism: An Introduction
Multiple Authors

In the Wake: On Blackness and Being
Christina Sharpe

Carceral Capitalism
Jackie Wang
Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of
Blackness
Simone Brown
Blessed is the Flame
Serafinski
Lets Destroy Work, Let's Destroy the
Economy
Alfredo M. Bonanno
Ediciones Ineditas Anthology
Noche and friends

Anarchy Comics

Essays

‘The Anarchy of Colored Girls

Assembled in a Riotous Manner
Saidiyata Hartman

We Demand Nothing
Johann Kaspar

Notes From the Rockford Rebellion
True Leap Press

‘The Divided God: A Letter to Hong
Kong
Chuang

Social Contagion: Microbiological
Class War in China
Chuang

Hostis: A Short Introduction to the
Politics of Cruelty

Projects

Afro-Abolitionists of the Americas
Anarchy in the Burbs

Abolish the UC

Confrontaciones

Cuadernos de Negacion
Indigenous Action

‘True Leap Press

Lausan

Chuang

Black Seed

Warrior Up

Pocheando Distro

Podcasts
Indigenous Action

Working Class History

Films

Bom in Flames (1983)

‘The Thick-Walled Room (1956)
‘Night of the Living Dead (1968)
‘A Page of Madness (1926)
Macario (1960)
CONTRIBUTORS

Authors of Original Texts

growan mck (@gypsyyrm on ig) lives in virginia where they sew clothes,
make zines, and hate on acoustic instruments. she does fake research on
music and the geographies of neoliberal capitalism, always interested in
how the spaces around us construct our lives, perpetuate ideologies, and
how people navigate and weaponize spatial nightmares. as a strong pro-
ponent of the powers of autotune on the subconscious, you can find her
listening to music with stray cats in “abandoned! locations.

Lait is a psyop created to make communists look bad. [editors note: this
isan obvious joke.

‘Tanze/Vattis a fungus that grows in boreal forests

Authors of Re-Published Texts
El Chavo I promised more info about myself, but I lied,

Abolish the UC Skip class. Cause ruckus. | A fan for the flames. |
inquiries: abolishtheUC (at) protonmail | disorientation guide

‘Monsieur Dupont is the collective name of the authors responsible for
Nibilist Communism and other works.

Assatta Shakur is a former member of the Black Liberation Army
(BLA), a target of COINTELPRO, and a fugitive currently living in
Cuba.

We Still Outside Collective is a group of Black friends in New York
City

Noche is a pissed-off chicano prole with a keyboard in the Los Angeles
Eastside, His personal blog is puraacracia.club

Circulo de Comunistas Esotéricos is a group of esoteric communists

 

‘We want to also thank Fire fo the Prisons for inspiring this project!

‘SUSLBH SUBLBH SUSLBH SYBL6H SULBH SUBL6H SULBH SU3ISH SULBH SUBLGH SURLSH SUBLGH SURLSH SUBLGH SULBH SUBLGH SUBISH SUSLBH SULSH

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